Game Developer

DECEMBER 12, 2022

Here's how playtesting helped Whitethorn Games refine the process. Ideally, accessibility is a primary design goal, not an afterthought.

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Playtesting Build Games 190

Tom Francis

MAY 27, 2023

A playtest of the previous version of Scavenger Chess also saw each side secure powerful but very different items, I’d love it if that became a signature of this game. ” Could not say which way it was going until the pincer movement, which was prob a blunder by black. Having both the Horsies vs Bugle might be winnable either way?

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Playtesting Tile Games Balance 52

PreMortem.Games

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

But the process doesn’t end there, and usually I keep discovering things that make me go back and forth and iterate, playtest, iterate, refine, playtest, iterate… I definitely recommend getting feedback from external playtesters at each step.” “I

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Dev Games Playtesting Indy 160

Brand Game Development

JANUARY 25, 2021

I’ve written before about the usefulness of documenting your playtesting. It contains both pragmatic advice and a primer to the mindset I want you to take into playtesting. Now your game is ready for blind playtesting. Send your game to new blind playtesters. Need help on your board game? Don’t interfere.

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Playtesting Games Mechanics Dev 130

Indie DB

JULY 23, 2023

Want to know more about the beta or join the playtest yourself? Hey there, fellow Catz! Today I want to announce the start of ZpellCatz' closed beta.

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Beta Playtesting 80

GamesIndustry.biz

JUNE 26, 2023

Google is reportedly playtesting a new YouTube feature called Playables, which would let users play games on the platform. According to the Wall Street Journal , which had access to an email sent to Google employees about Playables, games would be accessible directly on YouTube's website, or via the iOS or Android YouTube app.

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Playtesting Games Feature Platformer 87

GamesIndustry.biz

APRIL 17, 2023

While Nexon and Ironmace are both Korean, the suit argues that the US District Court Western District of Washington is an appropriate venue because Dark and Darker playtests were conducted on Steam (owned by Bellevue-Washington-based Valve) and some of the game's marketing has targeted American players. Read more

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Playtesting Studios Games 86

PreMortem.Games

MAY 1, 2023

Everyone must be online from 14h to 18h on Discord because this is ‘when things get done’ and we can all do brainstorms, playtests and all that.” The company started creating multiplayer games because the founding members wanted to playtest games together. “We do have some rules that were inspired by a friend that works at Valve.

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Studios Games Playtesting Build 104

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 30, 2023

We had three very different games that we spent around two weeks on each, developing them up to a point where we could playtest them with other people”, says Mason. ” “First impressions are very important, so when playtesting we wanted to see how long it took players to understand how the minigame worked”, he continues.

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Games Playtesting Prototyping Studios 104

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 20, 2023

We had three very different games that we spent around two weeks on each, developing them up to a point where we could playtest them with other people”, says Mason. ” “First impressions are very important, so when playtesting we wanted to see how long it took players to understand how the minigame worked”, he continues.

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Games Playtesting Prototyping Studios 104

Brand Game Development

MARCH 31, 2017

I’ve created a playtesting log and I’ve done 11 tests so far. If you want to learn more about record-keeping and playtesting, I’ve got a great article for you to check out. I take my own advice, and this is what my playtesting log looks like. These tests can all be classified as “movement tests.”

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Dev Playtesting Simulation Games 130

Indie DB

MARCH 7, 2023

This sandbox shooter indie begins a brand new playtesting period

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Playtesting Indy Sandbox 98

The GameDev Guru

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Learn the basics of the Unity Immediate Window package by solving a critical challenge in Game Development: Automating Playtests!

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Playtesting Art Game Developer Game Development 100

GamesIndustry.biz

MARCH 27, 2023

Dark and Darker has been pulled off Steam – where it was currently in playtests – following the ongoing battle between developer Ironmace and publisher Nexon. As reported by RPS , Ironmace received a cease and desist and DMCA takedown from Nexon.

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Playtesting Development 52

PreMortem.Games

MAY 19, 2023

To continuously improve the climbing system and make it more realistic while maintaining an enjoyable gameplay experience, the team engages in discussions with playtesters, climbers, and programmers. “We But we probed and playtested, and we pulled through without changing course to a climbing-inspired arcade game”, says Boogaard.

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Dev Indy Studios Playtesting 104

PreMortem.Games

AUGUST 16, 2023

In our team everyone has different roles in coding, design and testing, but at the end of the day we comment on each other’s work in playtests.” “We tried to design a game with a similar primitive setting of Populous games, but focusing on the technology and culture building aspect of grand strategy games instead of base building.

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Games Indy Playtesting Studios 104

Indie DB

DECEMBER 25, 2022

A playtest is coming soon for this cross-genre third-person action RPG

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Playtesting 72

Indie DB

JANUARY 6, 2023

An open playtest is here for this VR common-life sim

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Playtesting 72

Ask a Game Dev

MAY 5, 2023

This is where playtesting comes in. We typically run playtests as often as possible in order to ferret out these issues so that we can adjust them if they are too egregious. Something that makes sense by the formula might still be too strong or too weak. The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.

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Playtesting Dev Texture Games 52

Brand Game Development

JULY 9, 2018

/r/tabletopgamedesign and /r/boardgameindustry are good for connecting with other designers and developers, getting feedback on a design, or even organizing playtests. Many developers choose to create their own subreddits for playtesting. It worked great. /r/boardgames r/boardgames is great for the community.

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Dev Games Playtesting Game Developer 130

Brand Game Development

JUNE 3, 2019

You can further pare down journey maps and empathy maps to very specific scenarios and instances which create many playtesting questions. Playtesting in this stage of game design is related to user research in UX design. This is a treatment we apply to a journey map , turning it into an empathy map.

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Playtesting UX Game Design Game Designer 130

Indie DB

MAY 6, 2023

This immersive sandbox shooter plans a new playtesting period

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Playtesting Sandbox 52

PreMortem.Games

MAY 24, 2023

The team of White Star Studios closely monitored the results of early playtest sessions. Combining these elements with sim mechanics meant we could come up with some exciting, innovative gameplay.” But it took some tweaking to get the right balance. It showed that players preferred a less hardcore approach.

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Studios Playtesting Games Mechanics 104

Nvidia

MARCH 24, 2022

This extended infrastructure provides a developer platform for studios and publishers to perform their game development virtually, starting with playtesting. With GeForce NOW Cloud Playtest, players and observers can be anywhere in the world. All this is possible with Cloud Playtest on the GeForce NOW Developer Platform.

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Ray Tracing Game Developer Game Development Playtesting 52

Brand Game Development

MARCH 9, 2020

Watch your playtesters’ reactions. With so many issues, it seems unlikely that Monopoly was thoroughly playtested. At the very least, it wasn’t playtested to modern standards. That means when your components are fiddly and annoying, so is your game! So many of the flaws above can be observed and corrected.

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Game Design Game Designer Games Playtesting 130

Keith Burgun

APRIL 27, 2023

I notice it with my playtesters that all of us are sincerely way more excited to play. I’m doing a bunch of playtesting recently on all eight characters because I want them to be as awesome as possible for the launch of the Kickstarter in a few months. By contrast, this version consistently gets way more positive reactions.

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Dev Playtesting Games Development 52

Brand Game Development

APRIL 27, 2020

Two groups that come to mind are the Tabletop Game Playtesters Guild and Card & Board Game Designers Guild. Remember: they’re doing you a huge favor! Finally, go in prepared. There are large groups of people who absolutely love play-testing, even though it is often hard work. Visit your local game store.

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Games Playtesting Game Design Game Designer 130

iXie gaming

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

PlaytestCloud PlaytestCloud enables you to playtest any video game on any platform, including iOS and Android. This tool focuses on gathering user feedback and playtesting. Developers use this tool to detect memory leaks and other low-level issues in their video games.

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Games Playtesting Bug Quality Assurance 52

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Through playtesting, you can answer the question “do the mechanics suit the theme?”. Figure out the theme you want to capture, try building it through mechanics, then playtest and tweak until you successfully captured your desired theme. Then you can start developing mechanics. The further you go, the grittier rules become.

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Mechanics Playtesting Dev Games 100

Jon Shafer

APRIL 10, 2020

Diplomacy is a tricky feature which requires a lot of playtesting to evaluate and so this is a fairly long-term project. Hey all, I’ve decided to post my design plan for the diplomacy changes coming in v1.4 to give you an idea of what’s on the horizon. When launching a new project I like to … Continue reading v1.4

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Playtesting Feature 52

Radiator Blog

DECEMBER 18, 2021

Maybe the biggest functional improvement of the art pass was for the breakable crates; a fair number of blockout playtesters had trouble discerning that they were indeed breakable (breakable objects aren't in vanilla Quake) so I spent a lot of time making sure the final art-passed crates looked detailed, unusual, thin, and full of holes.

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Playtesting Texture Art Fighting 52

Sirlin

OCTOBER 13, 2022

These are updated pretty often based on feedback and playtesting from patrons. Check out the video teaser of what it looks like, here: At the silver patron tier, you can get all the print-and-play files as well as access to a non-rules-enforced virtual tabletop version in screentop.

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Playtesting Fantasy Fighting Games 52

Game Analytics

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Playtesting is crucial at this point. If we know from playtesting that players generally really enjoy specific features, but we see from analytics that players aren’t engaging with them, perhaps it’s a good idea to make them more accessible in our next game. We added a light, but it didn’t help.

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Dev Playtesting Fantasy PC 91

Radiator Blog

SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

These huge labor-intensive maps are hard to make for a variety of reasons, but in this particular context, the most relevant problem is that playtesting the same hand-tuned encounter repeatedly quickly drains its charm and it becomes difficult to gauge whether it's still interesting or not.

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Playtesting Scripting Fighting Dev 52

Radiator Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2021

I'm still working on some personal projects: I have two gay games that are 95% done, they just need some playtesting and polish, but finding an in-person playtesting group in Auckland has been a bit challenging. Regardless I'll probably be releasing these games this March and April.

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Playtesting Games Engine Engineering 40

Brand Game Development

JANUARY 2, 2018

Every iteration of each game has to be created somehow and there are A LOT of iterations – usually a new one after each playtest, especially in the beginning. Whenever I demo or playtest, I make sure to get the email address of the person, so I can inform them when the Kickstarter starts. Carla: I also do a lot of interviews!

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Games Playtesting Game Developer Game Development 130

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

All this before there’s ever any playtesting done. “Having full control over the entire project and its creative direction counts as a pitfall too. When working in a team ideas bounce around, feedback is given etc. I realized I missed this aspect a lot.

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Dev Games Puzzle Playtesting 104